News & Views

Cannes Lions / Branded Content and Entertainment Winners

Intel, Toshiba and agency Pereira & O'Dell San Francisco win their second Grand Prix for the Beauty Inside campaign

Saturday saw the trophy-rich get richer across the festival, and Intel, Toshiba and agency Pereira & O'Dell San Francisco picked up another Grand Prix for the The Beauty Inside campaign work in the branded content category.

The decision to award the Grand Prix to the campaign which invited contributors to inhabit the key protagonist's body with chapters of user generated content was easy according to jury president Scott Donaton, CEO and president of Ensemble.

'We had a wonderful shortlist of over 100 entries,' Donaton said. 'Yet when we first came across this piece of work, we didn't talk about anything else for the next hour. What we believe from The Beauty Inside and Intel and Toshiba, is that it was born out of a very powerful brand truth - that it's what's inside that counts - and this was so relevant to the audience and the brand and executed in a really beautiful, powerful and engaging way.'

A total of 59 Lions were awarded, with a hefty 17 Golds spread across a diverse selection of categories and markets, including China, South Africa and The Philippines. The jury credited a strong year of work and brands' increasing competence in telling stories - itself a prevalent theme at this year's festival - with the spread.

'It wasn't just the individual ideas, but the way in which they were brought to life. We often talk about story-led marketing as the future of marketing, but I think that the quality of the work we saw this week shows that it's not the future - it's here,' Donaton said.

Donaton explained how the jury was impressed by the fact that in The Beauty Inside the brands and the product were integral to driving the content's completion and efficacy. 'It's really social at its core and most importantly, these are the only brands that could have produced this work. The brands not only inspired the storyline, but the storyline itself was powered all the way through by them,' Donaton said. 'So it wasn't a matter of "Hey, how are we doing integrations and where are the logos appearing?" It was truly a matter of this was a story that would've stalled if it wasn't for the role of the laptop and the video diaries in Alex's life.'

Donaton was also open about the fact that there was one other entry which was in contention (albeit for a short while) for the Grand Prix - the feature-length The Movie Out Here - from the Labatt-owned Canadian beer brand, Kokanee. He explained:

'We loved the swing that the marketer took, the commitment they made to building a fantastic integrated marketing campaign around the film. But quite honestly, when we watched the film, we felt the quality of the content just fell a little bit short and convinced us of the choice that we made. Obviously the idea itself is very important - the way that it's surrounded, amplified and activated is very important - but ultimately the content itself has to live up to the concept.'

When it came to questions from the assembled press, there was just one topic that the jury wouldn't be drawn on - namely the absence of Red Bull's barnstorming Stratosproject and how it might have changed their decision had it been entered. 'It wasn't entered so we didn't judge it, we didn't discuss it', Donaton said.